Microsoft's legal chief: "We continue to be dogged by an issue we had hoped would be resolved by now: Google continues to prevent Microsoft from offering consumers a fully featured YouTube app for the Windows Phone." Utter nonsense, since MetroTube offers a complete and full YouTube experience on Windows Phone (it's one of the best Windows Phone applications), and YouTube+ on Windows 8. Two fantastically rich applications, built by small ISVs - yet Microsoft can't do the same? Don't make me laugh. Coincidentally, Microsoft is also whining some more about Google's removal of ActiveSync - Redmond again refuses to acknowledge that all it needs to do is implement the open standards CalDAV and CardDAV, just like everyone else has done. Times have changed, Ballmer. You don't get to dictate the industry anymore.

Proof buddy! You have none. If you do, please show it. Otherwise, this conspiracy of yours is bullshit.

Why is it so difficult for you to get behind Google opening up their YouTube API? Why is it so hard for you to point the finger at Google?

It would be great if they did - but the fact of the matter is, is that it doesn't seem to matter. Closed or not, there are fantastic third party YouTube applications, and for the first time in eons, we saw breakage a few weeks ago that lasted a whole day (wow!). It'd be great if they opened it - it just doesn't seem to matter.

Proof buddy! You have none. If you do, please show it. Otherwise, this conspiracy of yours is bullshit.

So providing access to the API for iOS and Android clients but refusing to grant Microsoft permission to use said API, and refusing to grand MetroTube permission to use the API isn't a direct attack on third party YouTube apps?

A couple of things. Firstly, I don't understand what _you_ don't understand about the work "private" in "private API."

Second, I don't understand why, exactly, it is you think that they are in any way, shape or form obligated to provide the same level of access to 3rd parties to begin with...

Those iOS and Android apps? They were developed _by Google_ last I checked. Could it be, just maybe, that they don't see the _value_ in developing a Windows Phone version because it's just not a large enough market and viewed as a waste of time?

And maybe, just maybe, part of the reason that they don't have a fully featured public API is that they are still changing it and don't want to be tied to an API interface that would be sub-optimal? The fact that the private interface changes and breaks things is a bit of a hint...

They've been doing an awful lot with YouTube lately that seems to be in an effort to bring it in line with the rest of Google's product offerings and this may be part of that.

OR

Perhaps they don't have a "fully featured" public API because, well, they just don't want to.

Which brings us full circle back to using private APIs to build one. Well thats cool. Go ahead. But understand that if you use undocumented, private APIs to do anything they _can and will_ break. It's not necessarily trying to actively subvert 3rd party clients. It's a developer changing an internal API. Private APIs are subject to change at _any time_ without notice because they are PRIVATE. That's what PRIVATE API means.

Get. Over. It. There is not conspiracy. Some just did the equivalent of changing a function signature or move a class around.